This year's election map is an optimism map

This year's presidential electoral map is shaping up to be
unusual in a few ways, but I've been fascinated what looks to me
like a migration gap.

Donald Trump is underperforming the typical Republican
candidate in states that are magnets for migration — places
like North Carolina, Colorado, Georgia, and Texas.

He's doing unusually well in states where net migration
is low or even negative, such as Iowa, Maine, and Michigan.

Partly, this is about negative economic circumstances: States
where people don't want to move to tend to be places where the
economy has not been good.

And partly it's about demographics: Slow-growing states tend to
be whiter, and the ones where Trump is doing especially well tend
to have a lot of less-educated whites who have historically voted
Democratic but are unusually drawn to him.

But could it also be partly because Clinton is more
appealing to the sort of person who would want to move
somewhere new, while Trump appeals more to people who would
prefer to stay somewhere familiar?

This election, much more than most, is a referendum on openness
and optimism: Are we scared of the changes happening in our
country? Do we believe our best days ahead of us?

Moving is a sign that you believe your own actions can improve
your personal circumstances; that America offers opportunities so
long as one is willing to seize them. It also signals openness to
change: If you moved across the country, you might not
be so scared of "taco
trucks on every corner."

Look, for example, at the difference between Maine and New
Hampshire. In 2012, Barack Obama won Maine by 15 points and New
Hampshire by just 5 points. In this election, the two states
look much more similar: FiveThirtyEight is currently projecting a
5-point Clinton win in Maine and a 3-point win in New Hampshire.

Why the difference? There is the demographic answer:
Both states are extremely white, but New Hampshire is much
more educated and wealthier, so it has more of the sort of voters
with whom Clinton has made inroads. Maine has lots of
working-class whites for Trump to pick up.

But there is also an answer about migration: As of 2012, 66% of
Maine residents were born in Maine, while just 42% of New
Hampshire's residents had been born in New Hampshire. One is
a state of movers; the other is not.

Clinton leads by 10 points among whites with a college
degree who moved to North Carolina. Trump leads by 20 among
those born in the state. Among whites without a college
degree, Trump leads by 42 points among voters not born in the
state, and by 56 points among natives to the state.

Of course, that's partly because a lot of the transplants come
from states where white voters tend to be more Democratic than
North Carolina — they move to the south and bring more
liberal viewpoints with them. But it's also consistent with
a gap in openness and optimism between transplants and
non-transplants.

This seems to me like another effect that should be going on our
list of potential drivers of the realignment being seen in this
election.

This is a column. The opinions and conclusions expressed above are those of the author.